Three R's: Reading, Writing, RFID 

Stillman was tipped off to RFID by the vice principal's husband, who works at a Buffalo Web design studio that is partnered with Intuitek, the company that designed the school's system.

Stillman originally wanted the RFID tags sewn directly into the students' uniforms, but teachers feared that the kids might simply swap uniforms to dupe the system, so he decided to have students wear the picture tags around their necks instead.

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Privacy experts expressed dismay at the idea of using RFID tags on children.

"I think the Buffalo experiment is getting children ready for the brave new world, where people are watched 24/7 in the name of security," said Richard Smith, an Internet privacy and security consultant. "My main concern is that once we start carrying around RFID-tagged items on our person such as access cards, cell phones, loyalty cards, clothing, etc., we can be tracked without our knowledge or permission by a network of RFID readers attached to the Internet."

Lee Tien, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation -- who has vehemently opposed a San Francisco Public Library Commission plan to use the chips to track its inventory -- was also critical of the program.

"In general, all person-location-tracking technologies raise privacy issues, from hiding beepers on people's cars or in people's clothing to video surveillance," Tien said. "Insecure location-tracking technologies raise the further question of who is tracking, as well as who has access to any tracking records kept by the system."

Intuitek President David M. Straitiff said his company built privacy protections into the school's RFID system, including limiting the reading range of the kiosks to less than 20 inches and making students touch the kiosk screen instead of passively being scanned by it. He pooh-poohed the notion that the system would be abused.

"(It's) the same as swiping a mag-strip card for access control, or presenting a photo ID badge to a security guard, both of which are commonplace occurrences," Straitiff said.

Additionally, Stillman said that the RFID-linked databases would require separate passwords to access students' disciplinary, attendance, health, library and cafeteria records.

"It's as private as anything else can be when your information is stored on a server," he said.

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